Other New Directions
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day five hundred and twenty-eight:  Berry.St  In an alternate universe, Jesse St.James finds his days at McKinley High changed when Will Schuester takes over Glee Club.


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 25th cycle. Now cycle 26!_

_A/N: Just to remove possible confusion, this is the alternate world of the series, but from Alternate!Jesse's point of view, from before the swap... :)_

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><p><strong>"Other New Directions"<br>AU!Jesse, AU!New Directions, AU!Jesse/Quinn  
>Berry-St #12 <strong>

Jesse St. James had his dream. He'd cultivated it for the better part of his life, in the best way he could, considering his circumstances. He knew where he lived, and that the odds tended to weigh on people from there, that the kinds of things he wanted were not particularly known to happen to them. That didn't mean he would stop trying.

Of course there were some problems, one problem more than any other, standing in his way at the moment… and his name was Sandy Ryerson. He knew from day one that the man had a bit of a… fixation. When he'd walked into that room, expecting to find a whole bunch of others who shared in his love for performing, he found a piano and one man, wearing a pink sweater draped over what Jesse would later hear him call 'delicate shoulders.' And when the man saw Jesse, there was something like a gasp and a muffled squeal mixed together.

Ever since then, Jesse had done his best to carry on with what he wanted to do, even as he got to know more and more what kind of man Sandy Ryerson was. And as disturbing as his thinly veiled advances were, they weren't Jesse's biggest issue with him. He was getting frustrated. Nothing was happening, and if things went on like this, he would become exactly what this town made of people… nothing at all. So one day, when his frustrations were coupled with Ryerson's giving his attention to Hank Saunders all of a sudden, he had enough. He went to Principal Figgins, and he told him every sordid little detail of his time under the bedazzled wing of Sandy Ryerson.

At first he wasn't sure what would happen, after he heard Mr. Ryerson was fired. But the way he saw it, he was better off with no Glee Club at all than to have to rest all his options on that man. Maybe this would be his chance to seek other possibilities. Of course, Glee Club wasn't doomed… not yet. When he saw the sign-up sheet, he already knew who was leading this new effort… Will Schuester, his Spanish teacher. What did a Spanish teacher know about Glee Club? So he'd done his research. When he found out that the trophy he stared at, almost every time he walked by the case, had been won in part thanks to him, he felt his hope renewed. So he went to put his name to it.

He'd barely turned away from it that he felt a sudden crash of ice up his spine… He spun around just in time to find Noah Puckerman walk by, empty Slushie cup in hand. He met his eye, and the mohawked jock gave him what Jesse immediately recognized as the impression of him which had become almost like a hobby to the students of McKinley. It had started somewhere in late summer, with a video. He had recorded himself singing and playing piano to Ray Charles' "You Don't Know Me," in hopes to show it to… someone, anyone, who could help him move forward.

He didn't know how it happened, but somehow someone did get a hold of it… he didn't know how. Whoever it was could have forgotten about it and moved on with their life but, no, they did something worse. They unleashed it on the world of William McKinley High School. Even before the school year started, he would see people around Lima, kids from school, go by and make this face before laughing and walking off. He wasn't sure what was going on, but then one day he saw a few of them, huddled around a laptop, laughing, making the face… and then he saw the screen, his video, his face…

He was already a target in their eyes, this was nothing new, although he would be lying if he said it didn't hurt at least a little bit. He had chosen the song because he loved it, and they were almost tainting it for him. He wasn't going to let them do that, so when he stepped on that stage for his Glee Club audition to Mr. Schuester, he announced that he would be singing "You Don't Know Me," by the great Ray Charles. He reclaimed his song, and got his place in the new club, New Directions. He didn't want to get his hopes up too high, knowing what that had gotten him last time, but he didn't let that show. He went, and he saw what they had… There were five of them, himself included. There were two other guys and two girls. He didn't know them really well, though he knew a couple of them did sing. Still he couldn't help like feeling this was never going to work, and after their first 'attempt' at a performance, he was even more convinced of this, so he made his opinion known to Schuester. They needed more people, better people…

And then he showed up at practice, a couple days later, to find they had become six… one more guy. Finn Hudson, quarterback, all around popular guy… Now the alarms went off in Jesse's head, and pretty soon they blared even louder, when Mr. Schuester gave the leads to him and Mercedes. She was fine by it, judging by the smirk on her face; Finn was shaky on his determination, if his panic was as strong as his face showed; and Jesse… he was back-up. No, this wouldn't do; this wouldn't do at all, and midway through, he just stopped singing. Mr. Schuester told him they'd figure things out as they went, but Jesse was far from convinced. The way he saw it at the moment was that he had a rival, and he would be treated as such. Any other situation, he would have kept his distances from the jock, but he was on his turf now, and they would play by his rules.

Mr. Schuester took them to Akron to see their competition, Carmel's Vocal Adrenaline. Before the show started, Jesse had gone to get something to eat, and when he turned he saw who was behind him and immediately soured. "You're going to see what Glee Club is really about," Jesse told him. "Just don't feel bad when you need to resign. No one will hold it against you."

"Well that's not really an op… Am I that bad?" Finn asked. Jesse looked back ahead.

"Just see for yourself," was all he told him. Soon they would get their seats, and Jesse tried to discreetly keep an eye on Finn, to see his realization he was in way over his h…

He forgot all about Finn when Vocal Adrenaline began their number. Saying they were good was an understatement… Excellent would have been putting it mildly as well. There was no way, in his mind, that they could ever compete with them, with the number of people they had and… To make matters worse, when they got back to Lima, they found out a few days later that they would be losing Mr. Schuester. Jesse started to feel like he'd been careless, like he had this opportunity now, finally, and he was going to let it get away from him. He had to do something, and he knew, as much as he would hate to admit it, that there was just one person who would be able to help him at this time.

But Finn didn't show up at Glee practice, not anymore. After a week or so, he decided he had to go talk to him, to fix things. "Can I talk to you for a second?" he spoke as he approached Finn at his locker. Finn looked over at him like he'd been expecting this.

"Look, I'm sorry, I guess you were right about me not being…"

"Okay, I might have been hoping to misdirect you back there, and I'm sorry. So, come on," he nodded.

"No, but you were right. Besides, I don't belong in there, it's too… I don't have time," Finn went on, but Jesse could see right through it.

"If I'm going to be honest a lot of this is me trying to hang on to this thing because of what it means. It's an opportunity, possibly the first real one I've had, and it can be yours, too… sort of. You're actually not as bad as I might have suggested."

"Thanks… I think."

"The point is you shouldn't give up. Not just because we need you but because I saw the look on your face, after the song you did with Mercedes. Before you were a complete wreck and I thought you would crash and burn, which was what I wanted, but…" He stopped himself, realizing he was losing his way, so he brought it back. "But after, you looked happy, like you were finally where you wanted to be. So don't just abandon that, you…"

"Finn," a voice cut in, and Jesse turned to find himself standing right next to none other than Quinn Fabray, and he forgot how to speak. He'd seen her plenty of times, around school, with the Cheerios, but this was the first time he'd been so close to her, and he lost all senses. He was just glad she wasn't really paying attention to him, and he just watched as she spoke to Finn. Right, she was his girlfriend… She watched them walk away together and after a beat of her being gone, he blinked, slowly walking off. Then he remembered Glee Club, and he ran to the auditorium. If he didn't show up, it would be anarchy, and mutiny…

In fact there were only three of them there when he showed up. Kurt and Mercedes were arguing, while Tina just stood there, quietly. He tried to get them to focus, to present them with a new choreography he'd come up with, but just as he feared, they wouldn't listen to him. This was it, no more Glee Club. His shining dream of things finally changing had lost all its light, and even his light was about to go out.

But then came Finn, with Artie in tow, and seeing him, Jesse could tell he was in this now. He had gotten through to him, and they had a shot again. And Jesse, he also had the start of something, a friendship he never would have imagined, with the quarterback. Thanks to him, to both of them and the others, they had all finally become McKinley's own New Directions.

THE END

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><p><strong>AN: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
><strong>**In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
><strong>****always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!** **


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